Calling Out (19 page)

“Do you think I'm a bad person for not going with
him?”

“As if I'm in any position to judge anyone,” I say.

“It's not the right thing for me to follow him down
there. It would make me resent him eventually,” she says.
“He's way too good to be subjected to that.”

“Well, if it matters, I'm glad you stayed,” I say. I want
to sink down into right here forever.

Ember hooks her fingers into mine.

“Of course it matters,” she says.

“So what now?” I ask, half-hoping she'll decide everything for me, take away the uncertainty and fear of what
I'm supposed to do next.

Ember shrugs and hooks her leg onto mine.

“Jane?”

“Yeah?”

“Has there been anyone since McCallister?”

“Nah.”

“Don't you miss it?”

I think about sex and the first things that come to
mind are peeing and hockey.

“Not really,” I say. “In an abstract way, I guess. The
longer it's been, the more remote it seems. I miss the first
skin-to-skin contact under the covers. Getting hugged
from behind. Having a neck to kiss. Mostly, I think I miss
being part of something everyone else isn't in on.”

“That makes me sad,” Ember says. “When I'm alone I
miss sex almost immediately. The leading-up-to-it part
and the sex itself. That's when I'm okay. But the minute
it's over and he pulls away, the clock starts ticking and it
won't be long until I start feeling lost, like I might float
away.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“Well, not really float away, but yeah.”

“Even with Ford?”

“Especially with Ford because he thinks it's all something it's not. And I'm reminded of that every time.”

Ember picks at lint on the comforter. “But you're
doing it again. You always masterfully deflect my prying.
So why are you here anyway?”

“Here?”

“Here. Utah. This bed.”

My face burns.

“There's no shame in hiding out, if that's it. That's
pretty much my game. Flee from one haven to the next, as
long as it protects or distracts me. Survive the time. Don't
think that I'm too far gone to notice the pattern.” She
nudges me with her shoulder. “What are you hiding from?”

I put a pillow over my face but Ember pulls it away
and pokes me in the arm.

“I don't think of it as hiding,” I say. “More like
removing myself so I can do things differently. Not starting
over but consciously choosing something for a change.
Not just going along with circumstance.”

“That sounds good but I have a feeling that this is
about McCallister,” she says.

“Now you sound like him. No. That's over.”
“When is anything with a man ever over?”
“I want it to be.”

“Okay, okay. Then what about Ford?”

“What about him?”

“Oh come on. You two are both a little in love with
each other.”

She interrupts my sputtering protest with a laugh.

“I think it's sweet,” she says.

I sit up.

“That's not it. Really,” I say.

“Just think of me now and again when you're growing
old together.”

The phone rings until the machine clicks on.

“Um, Shena, it's noon and you're on call. Hello? Are
you there?”

“Shit,” Ember says, oozing out of bed.

She cuts two lines of cocaine on the bedside table. The
dreamy morning evaporates while Kendra rattles on.

“Okay already,” Ember says, snorting up one and then
the other with a well-used straw. She keeps on her outfit
from the night before, still reeking of smoke, pulls her hair
into a lopsided ponytail and quickly sniffs her armpits.
Gargling a mouthful of mouthwash, she grabs her keys
and she's out the door, leaving it open behind her.

Nikyla and Jezebel are on the couch, flipping through
a Delia's catalog.

“This is a good look for you, Rox,” Nikyla says holding
up the catalog.

“That skirt's so short,” I say. “Maybe if I were ten years
younger.”

“You always say that but we're all just girls here. Age
doesn't mean anything,” Jezebel says. She lies down on
Nikyla's lap and hangs her legs over the side of the couch
with Albee asleep on her stomach.

“Have you talked to that guy you were dating?” I ask.

Jezebel shakes her head “no.”

“Listen,” Nikyla says. “He's not worth your time. The
right one will love you no matter what.”

Jezebel shrugs, unconvinced, and points to some
skater pants.

“Yeah, those are cute,” Nikyla says. “You can get some
like it at the store. Use my discount.”

“Hey, Roxanne. Did you hear what happened to
Miranda last night?” Jezebel asks, readjusting the puppy.

“She was almost raped,” Nikyla says.

“What?” I'm stunned by the revelation and by their
prioritizing it behind cute pants.

“She ran out with only her purse. Her arms and legs
had all these bruises,” Jezebel says. “The dickhead even
called out after her that she forgot her clothes.”

Her nonchalance is forced. I know this reminder of
what could happen brings our vulnerability into stark relief.

“Is she okay?” I ask.

Nikyla looks up from the catalog at the blinds-shaded
window.

“She called in a couple hours after she got home but
no one's seen her since. She hasn't come in,” Jezebel says,
trying hard to play down the incident so she'll be able to
face another date.

“I talked to her,” Nikyla says. “She said she's leaving.
Going to Idaho to her parents'. She doesn't sound that
good.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Yeah, right,” Jezebel says, sitting up.

“Come on, Rox, even you're not that naïve,” Nikyla
says with uncharacteristic edge. “It's not like she didn't
take the money.”

“What does Mohammed say?”

Both girls just look at me. I feel queasy.

Jezebel says in a mocking Arabic accent, “Just put him
on the 86ed list and don't send anyone to see him. It's
over. No one gets hurt.”

Kendra is murmuring in her best phone sex voice
back at the desk.

“Jezebel,” Kendra says, “Don Steele at the Marriott.”

“Score,” Jezebel says. “That means presents.”

I feel like shaking them until they break and their fear
tumbles out.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Josh got the promotion.
He's manager now,” Nikyla says, examining her face in a
compact.

“You know what that means,” Jezebel says.
Nikyla makes a rocking cradle with her arms.
“Really?” I ask.

“As soon as possible,” Nikyla says.

I force a smile. But I feel the need to flee.

It's four o'clock as I drive west out of town toward
Wendover. The news of the assault and of Nikyla's
impending pregnancy has left me feeling raw. All I can
stomach is driving. A trip through the expansive, moonlike Bonneville Salt Flats seems the only palatable option.
The sun is already orange and sinking ahead. To my right,
the Morton Salt factory perched on the edge of the lake is
idle and vacant.

I never would have admitted it at the time but I
thought McCallister and I were going to get married. It
was not something I actively hoped for. I had just
assumed. We were different than other people. We were
weird. We were a team. I couldn't imagine anyone else
understanding me the way I thought he did. I thought
that as long as McCallister needed me enough, I'd win by
default.

When we had been together only two months—still
feeling blithe and unstoppable—I got pregnant. McCallister was coolheaded about it while I was terrified. He
said all the right things: the timing is wrong, we're not
ready, it's a practical decision, we'll have plenty of time,
we'll get through this. He said all those abstract niceties
that made me feel better on the surface, but he shied away
from the messy undertow. I let him.

He went with me to the clinic, he paid for it, he held
my hair when I threw up into a paper bag in the cab on
the way home, he took care of me afterward and brought
me chocolate and movies and maxi pads for the endless
flow of blood. He asked me how I was but I knew he
didn't want to hear that I hurt, that I was seized by
cramps, that I resented him, that I felt a lack.

“I'm fine,” I said again and again, and seeing as we
didn't know each other well and that he was trying his
best, I let it go at that. And so did he. In the days, weeks,
months that followed, I stowed the memory, and every
scrap that clung to it, in a crevice of my head, forcing my
mind to imagine a blank page whenever I would think of
it, congratulating myself when the stretches between
remembrances grew further apart.

We never talked about it. Sometimes I wonder if he's
forgotten. Or maybe it's something he could never quite
get over. At least with Maria he has a clean slate.

The salt flats are eerily white and sere, tinged pink by
the setting sun. Smooth planes of water surround the
craggy rock formations to the north, and the resulting
reflections make them look like floating meteors. The
thought passes through my head that if I stay on I-80, I'd
end up in San Francisco, which has a certain appeal. But I
have to pee and I haven't eaten all day and I'm not that
deluded as to try running away again.

So I exit. Wendover is half in Utah, half in Nevada,
and the Utah side is a meager strip of trailers, a bodega, a
gas station, a Mormon church, and little else. The state
taxes are higher, so there's no incentive to live on this side
of the line except to uphold some moral obligation to the
church.

The Nevada Wendover is a small gambling oasis
taunting and tempting Utahns to come over for a spell, a
brightly lit miniature Oz emerging from the desert overlook. Giant Wendover Will, a neon, pointing cowboy with
a cigarette in his mouth, marks the Stateline Casino, and
a “This Is the Place” sign mocks its counterpoint back in
Salt Lake.

The rodeo is in town and it looks as if I've wandered
onto a western movie set. Every man I see has a cowboy
hat on, and every woman has a chambray shirt tucked
into tight jeans. I slip into the clanging sea of the casino,
where I go unnoticed against a backdrop of blinking
lights, slot machine bells, and the sound of coins falling
into metal trays. No clocks, no visible exits, no windows,
just the smell of stale smoke, the metallic tang of money,
and the itch to win. I find a five-dollar blackjack table and
an empty stool next to a young guy with a florid face and
a black Stetson. The knuckles of his hand tapping the
table for a hit are scabbed and cracked. He nods when I sit
and turns his attention back to the dealer.

When the hand is done, the dealer (Sheila, Fresno,
CA) busts. She's thirty-five or so, with frosted hair, and
she's pudgy but attractive, with slender hands and rich
brown eyes. I flatten three twenties in front of me on the
table. She displays the money for a hidden camera in the
ceiling before stuffing it into the slot and expertly clicking
and stacking chips. An older couple on the end thank her,
wish her a Merry Christmas, and leave the table.

It's just the cowboy and I. Sheila the dealer points the
yellow plastic card at me to cut. I want her to like me. I cut
the deck, and right off bet a dollar tip for her alongside
my own hand. I split eights against her seven showing.
The cowboy holds at eighteen. He wins, I win both hands,
and Sheila doubles her tip. She thanks me with a slight
smile. I actually give the cowboy a high five. He says his
name is Boyd. My whiskey arrives just as a new round
begins and I feel lucky and energized and anonymous,
one with these two, giving an evil eye to a woman in a
sequined top who considers joining our group.

But by the time my third drink arrives, Sheila is on a
winning streak and I'm down $150, and Boyd now scowls
and bites his nails. I like to think we share at the moment
one simple desire: to be dealt good cards. When a new dealer
comes to take over for Sheila, Boyd looks forlorn, abandoned, as if she owed it to us to stay and help dig us out.

“Come on,” he says to her. “Just a few more hands?”

The spell has been broken. Now down $200, it seems
a steeper climb back up with mustached, tan Marty, Elko,
NV, dealing the cards.

“Shit,” Boyd says, lifting his hat and replacing it on his
head.

“Here for the rodeo?” I ask.

“Yeah. Going back to Rock Springs for Christmas
then I compete here again. I'm a bull rider.”

“Wow,” I say.

I finally win a hand.

“How 'bout y'all?” Boyd asks.

“I've never ridden a bull,” I say.

This makes him chuckle.

“Shit!” he yells when he hits a sixteen with a queen.
Boyd looks barely older than twenty.

The dealer's hands are smooth and lotion-shiny. His
nails are buffed. The hungry way Boyd and I watch those
hands makes me think that a table dealer is not so different from an escort. Offering the hope of redemption,
for a price. And even though we know better, we're
tempted again and again by the new promise, just this
once, just one more, maybe this time. Knowledge that a
game is fixed doesn't curb the urge to play.

I lose another three hands and I'm down a month's
rent. The dealer flicks his eyes to me as if in warning but
I'm close to very drunk and not far, I think, from winning
it all back. Boyd brazenly hits a seventeen against the
dealer's king and I follow suit, doubling down on a nine,
matching my reckless hundred-dollar bet. With an
unlikely four of clubs, Boyd hits big with twenty-one and
he pumps his fists in the air. For me, eighteen and twenty
beats Marty's seventeen and Boyd catches me in a clumsy
hug.